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by McClelland, Mark

  Raymond winced to hear such coarse language from this innocent-seeming young man. Tomas continued without the slightest sign of emotion.

  "You were here, in your harem. 'It's like I'm screwing dolls,' you said. 'You're not real. You're too fucking compliant.' And then you left."

  "Do you know where I went," asked Raymond, "or what I did?"

  "No sir."

  "Who was I talking to—was it one person, primarily, or several?"

  "You said it to all who were present at the time, but perhaps you said it most of all to Salya."

  "Salya?"

  "She was your favorite."

  "Was? What happened to her," asked Raymond.

  "It is said that you took her away, after you left. It is said that you appeared once in the harem, late at night, and disappeared with her, without speaking."

  "Really. And do you know where I took her?"

  "No."

  Raymond was surprised by how much Tomas knew—much as he had been surprised by how much Venetia knew.

  "Do you understand my hand gestures?

  Tomas looked at him questioningly. Raymond made his gesture for chimpanzee. "Like that? Do you know what that means?"

  "No sir."

  "Does anyone?" asked Raymond.

  "Not that I know of. When you made the hand gestures, they were for yourself."

  "Did I ever talk about another world? Reality prime?"

  "Yes. Often."

  "Did I mention a woman named Anya?" Tomas nodded. "Do you know if I ever looked into what she was doing? Was I ever in touch with her?"

  "You said that you had to forget her, you could never go back."

  Raymond thought of the mausoleum, and guessed at the deeper significance of this.

  "Did I mention the bunker?"

  "Yes. Early on, you would lie in your private space and you told us your mind would travel to the place you call the bunker. You would lie very still, sometimes for many hours. And you would make the hand gestures."

  "My private space?" asked Raymond.

  "The dome, at the bottom of the pool."

  "And when I came back, would I talk about it?"

  "No. But you would often want to be alone with Salya, or sometimes Scorpio. Perhaps you talked with them about the bunker."

  "You know Scorpio?"

  "He was your closest servant, the one of many forms."

  Raymond started to pace.

  "Tomas, is there a map of Nurania anywhere?"

  "There is the globe, sir, in your private space."

  "Really? Is it a dynamic globe?"

  "I don't understand your question."

  "Does it change? The globe. Does it change to reflect the current state of the world?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Raymond?" asked Tomas. "What happened to the women? They do not sing or open their curtains to greet you."

  Raymond stared at one of the curtains.

  "The women weren't allowed to leave their... chambers, were they?" asked Raymond.

  "Only when you requested them," said Tomas.

  "I'm afraid I don't know what happened to them. I... don't remember."

  And how is it that they're gone, but you're still here?

  "So, this globe... how do I get into the private space?"

  "You swim into it."

  "I just swim into it? It's that easy?"

  Tomas nodded.

  "Okay," said Raymond. "Stay here."

  Raymond dove into the water and swam straight to the dome at the bottom. He searched for a hatch or doorway, but saw nothing. He reached his hand out to touch the dome, but it slipped right through, into air. He felt like he would have to return to the surface for air soon, but decided to try what Tomas had said—swimming into the dome. He led with his hands, then his head, and soon found himself falling out of the water and onto the cushions.

  He tentatively inhaled, then took a deep breath when he found that he could breathe without difficulty. Above him, the two otters were in the water again, playing. They must have finished their snack. Toward the end of the pool, he saw the turquoise underside of cushion island, drifting ever so slightly to one side.

  Raymond liked this place immediately. He felt safe, and alone. He reached a hand out and touched the water. His finger came back wet. For the first time since entering Nurania, he wished he could just stay put awhile and enjoy the place.

  He got up on all fours and crawled over to the globe, then knelt and looked at it. It was in a heavy stand, which looked to be made of bronze. The globe itself had an antique look to it, as if drawn by a Renaissance-era cartographer. It took Raymond a moment to make sense of the world, interpreting the skewed lines to match the world of his own creation. He found the Faralons, tiny drawings of mountains strewn along a southwest-to-northeast line. There was even a trail of smoke coming from Mount Hawthorn, to indicate volcanic activity. Between Lidral and Hawthorn was a dot labeled "Faralonia". He quickly surveyed the rest of the globe, looking for similar points of interest. He scanned the northern hemisphere and found nothing. He had always had less regard for the northern hemisphere, perhaps because it seemed familiar, having spent the whole of his life on Earth's northern hemisphere. He then went around the southern hemisphere more carefully. But he saw nothing until he had gotten all the way back to the Faralons. To the south of Mount Golgora was another dot, labeled "the Village". Then a third dot caught his eye, at the northeast end of the Faralons, with the name "Iniquita" written next to it.

  "So, this isn't the village... And what the hell is Iniquita?"

  Raymond examined the globe stand, looking for a way to remove the globe so he could bring it with him. He spotted a rod that ran through the center of the globe, from pole to pole. He unscrewed the bronze cap at the top and lifted out the rod, catching the globe in his left arm as it rolled out of the stand. He cast the rod aside, wrapped both arms around the globe, and launched upward, into the water. With the buoyant globe in his arms, he floated quickly to the top.

  "Tomas," called out Raymond. "Catch."

  He kicked with his feet to stay afloat and heaved the globe upward. Tomas deftly grabbed it out of the air. Raymond climbed out of the water.

  "Tell me, Tomas, did I mention a place called 'the Village'?"

  "Sure, lots of times. Hank was from the Village, and you put him back there once you were done creating me."

  "Hank the Handler?" asked Raymond

  "Yes."

  "Did he take care of a chimpanzee named Molly?"

  Tomas nodded.

  "Do you know if he still does?"

  "I don't know. I just work here in Faralonia."

  "Hmm... do you know anyone else from the Village?"

  "Salya and Bailey were from the Village."

  "Who is Bailey?"

  "She and Salya were friends. You put Bailey back in the Village, too."

  "But you said I took Salya with me. There's another dot on the globe..." Raymond turned the globe in Tomas' hands. "Here. It's called Iniquita. Do you know what that is?"

  Tomas shook his head.

  "It's probably where I went when I left here. And from the way you described my departure from this place, I don't like the sound of it. If I know anything about my darker side, it will be a good deal more dangerous than Faralonia. I may need a companion. Would you be willing to accompany me there?"

  "I cannot leave Faralonia, sir. No one can. It is forbidden."

  Raymond noticed for the first time that there was a niche above the entrance to this hall, in which sat a blue bottle.

  "Tomas, what's that bottle?"

  "That is a bottle for putting messages into."

  "I don't understand," said Raymond.

  "You would create a message on a small piece of paper and place the paper inside a bottle. Then you would throw the bottle off the edge of the city, down into the river."

  "You mean all the way down, to the water that surrounds the city?"

  "Yes sir."

  "A
nd where would they go from there?" asked Raymond.

  "I don't know."

  "Hand me the globe for a second. There... okay, so the Ravello flows into the Moretti, which eventually flows into the Torian Ocean. They probably would have floated all the way to the ocean, and from there who knows where the currents would take them. Why would I throw messages in bottles out to sea?"

  As he held the large sphere in his hands, he could tell that tiny changes were occurring. But they were hard to make out. He would notice some small transition, move to inspect it, and find that he didn't know what it had looked like before. He held the globe out at arm's length. Gradually, he gathered that areas of green were turning brown.

  "Forest fires? The meteor showers must be moving westward across the planet as it turns." He pictured the intensity of the meteor showers increasing, a lead-up to the comet's impact. When the comet hit, all of Nurania would be destroyed. "As an animal handler... how many animals are there in Faralonia? Are they a-life?"

  "There are twenty-seven thousand four hundred thirty-three animals, of which twenty-seven thousand three hundred fifty are a-life."

  Raymond replayed the numbers in his head, wondering whether Tomas might have some sort of mental malfunction. Tomas must have seen the puzzled look on his face.

  "That's including the ants."

  "Ah.... Of course you would know how many ants there are. Excluding the ants, how many a-life animals are there?"

  "Sixty."

  "Sixty..." said Raymond, shaking his head. "All would be killed."

  "Do you remember telling me that the animals would disappear?" asked Tomas, without indication of a sense of loss, or even any particular significance.

  Raymond looked at him quizzically. "No... what was the context?"

  "You told me, 'Tomas, one day the animals will disappear, and when they do it will be time for you to go.' I asked if you meant that I should terminate myself, and you said, 'yes'."

  When I programmed the comet, I must have made a provision to save the a-life animals from experiencing the destruction. I let them live as long as possible and left them the Tomas persona as a keeper, perhaps with the hope that a new home could be found for them before the comet hit.

  "Okay, that makes sense."

  He imagined what would happen if the comet hit, with the a-life animals gone but the personas left behind. He had the sense that he actually wouldn't feel much at all—that it wouldn't matter. These were not real people, and they weren't a-life. They were logical processes in a computer, at risk of being terminated by another process which would simulate the impact of a really big, really fast rock.

  He pondered what chain of events could have led the original Raymond to unleash total destruction on Nurania. He tried to imagine his god copy, alone in this world, seeking satisfaction in a society of personas, all of them motivated by artificial parameters that he could modify as he saw fit. His god copy had created the Village, and Faralonia, and apparently another place called Iniquita... why? All in the pursuit of finding a society that could satisfy a need to be around people?

  Surrounded by people, yet entirely alone. Surrounded by pseudo-people, really. If you control everyone and everything around you, can you ever be satisfied? No wonder I was putting messages in bottles. But I couldn't risk throwing them out where any real person might find them—the FBI might get ahold of one and figure out I wasn't dead. So I sent virtual messages into a virtual ocean, on a computer nobody real could ever access?

  He looked at the globe and found the mouth of the Moretti again, imagining hundreds of bottles afloat on the ocean's currents. He wondered what they might say. But did he really need to track them down? He felt like he knew what he would find.

  "So, in Faralonia... there's this harem, and I saw lots of houses and businesses on the spiral road. I clearly spent a fair amount of time here in this hall. Is there anywhere else I spent a lot of time?"

  "You spent a lot of time in your house, in the café, and in the upper garden."

  "I have a house? Can you show me where that is? And the cafe, too? And what is the upper garden?"

  "I'm already late to feed the leopards."

  "Oh, I'm sorry—I didn't realize. Leopards? Cool. Will it take you long to feed them?"

  "Two minutes," replied Tomas. "But I'm also late to feed the sea turtles."

  "Great. How about if you bring me along."

  Tomas picked up his bucket in his left hand and reached out to Raymond with his right. Raymond took it and was instantly transported to an outdoor space, under open sky. They were in an open garden space, surrounded by flowering trees of various types.

  "The upper garden?" asked Raymond.

  "Yes," said Tomas, and he walked toward the tree line.

  "Are we on top of the city?"

  "Yes."

  Raymond watched Tomas walk up to a tree—a squat, sprawling tree that bore a star-shaped fruit similar to the one Venetia had introduced him to. Tomas looked up and made a kissy sound, and Raymond realized with a start that there was a leopard in the branches. It slowly stretched down and dropped to the ground. Tomas reached into his bucket, pulled out a hunk of red meat, and tossed it to the lanky cat. A larger leopard jumped down next to the first and started edging in on the meal. Tomas pulled another piece of meat from his magical bucket and fed it to the second cat, all the while cooing and softly speaking to them in Spanish.

  "They're beautiful," said Raymond. "A-life?"

  "Yes," replied Tomas. "Now for the sea turtles."

  "Wait... are the leopards allowed to range? And isn't it odd for them to live as a pair?"

  "You genetically altered their behavior to make them better pets."

  Tomas took Raymond's hand, and Raymond found himself in a dimly lit, misty space filled with birdsong. His gasped and panicked for a split second when he looked down and saw that he wasn't standing on anything. He felt as though he should be falling. Then he saw Tomas kick away in a swimming motion and go drifting upward. Raymond reached out, and the motion pushed his body backward a bit, as if he were pushing against water. He tentatively breathed in, thinking the air might be too fluid to breathe, but it was actually quite nice—cool and moist against the roof of his mouth.

  Tomas continued to swim away, and was disappearing from view. Raymond was still holding the globe under one arm, and found it awkward to swim, but he was able to kick hard and fast enough to get some speed up. He started catching up, and saw that Tomas was now just drifting. Beyond him, something large was slowly gliding toward them. Raymond kicked onward, and the thing started to take shape—it was a sea turtle. It gracefully moved its flippers up and down in a flying motion.

  Something white whizzed past Raymond's head, flew alongside Tomas, and came to a slow-motion hover in the space between Tomas and the sea turtle. Raymond stared at it, disoriented by its presence.

  "A seagull?"

  It brought its wings in beside it and drifted, then flapped briefly to stabilize itself. Tomas pulled handfuls of glossy squid from the bucket and sent them flying toward the sea turtle. The gull spread its wings and launched forward, intercepted a squid, and disappeared from view.

  When Raymond looked back to watch the turtle eat, it was gone. Tomas was alone, looking back at Raymond, and the squid were drifting from view.

  "It's time for me to go," called Tomas.

  "What? Wait." Raymond hurriedly kicked and paddled with his free arm to get closer to Tomas. "Wait, Tomas. That was just one turtle. What about the other animals?"

  "They are gone, too."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just know. There are now zero animals in Faralonia."

  "What about elsewhere on Nurania? This is too soon—the comet can't be coming already."

  "I can't tell. But it's time for me to go," said Tomas.

  "I created you. Don't go. I don't know where I am. I don't know how to get out of here. I need your help. I command you to stay."

  "Use the globe. Goodbye
Raymond," said Tomas politely. And he and his bucket vanished.

  "Tomas!" yelled Raymond desperately. "Tomas, come back!"

  He looked around. In every direction, nothing but mist. It was eerily quiet—the birdsong was gone.

  "Oh my god. The animals disappeared. This place is about to be destroyed, and I'm floating in some weird-ass... aquarium thing. 'Use the globe.' Thanks a lot."

  He thought about going up, thinking it would be good to get back to the upper garden and have a look around. Were the meteorites back? Was the comet about to hit?

  "Wait, the globe!"

  He held the globe out at arm's length, expecting to see some indication of what was going on. But it looked no different from before. He brought it closer and found the Faralonia dot. Immediately next to it, the ash cloud coming from Mount Hawthorn was bigger, and now there was one from Mount Lidral, too.

  "They're gonna blow. Shit. If I don't get away from here... I have to get away from here!"

  He started kicking upward. Then came the doubt—was up really up? He paused.

  "I would have come in standing up, I should think. This has to be up, more or less."

  He kept kicking and kicking. He considered ditching the globe to make better time, but it seemed too valuable to throw away.

  Up, up.

  A silvery shaft of light off to the left caught his eye. It appeared to be oriented in a more-or-less vertical line, so he corrected his direction to match it. Curiosity got the better of him, and he altered course again to get closer to it. It was a column of glowing silver water, a foot or so across, falling... up?

  "Shit. Am I going the wrong way after all? I'm dead—I'm never gonna make it out of here."

  He reached out and touched the water, and it exerted just enough force to propel him into a slow spin. He paddled to right himself.

  "Think. Think. Maybe I could use the force of the water to push me out of here. It has to go somewhere, right? Even if it's down, that would be better than being stuck in here."